You Lose
by wineandwasabi
Summary: A one-shot about how you lose.


You loved, and you loved, and you lost her.

You put your heart out there, but she didn't.

In her defence, she mistook that heart you presented, to be what you made it seem like- another prank. She was, after all, accustomed to the Weasleys more than she was to you. She knew you loved a laugh, and she was just protecting herself from being the one at whose cost you laughed.

In her defence, she did not realise.

But you didn't either. So you lost her.

If you loved her so, how could you not notice the wall around her? How could you not realise you would have to break it to reach her?

You got hurt. You felt a resolve build inside you. You let that come out, but as something you saw your father do and as what you had promised yourself to never do - you began to hurt her.

How could you not, when she did too? If she broke your heart, you deserved to too. You always give what you get. And you, you sad darling, lost her.

You know she tried. She tried to not let it affect her, she tried to go back to the good old times. Admirable. But you would not let her. Not now. Not anymore.

If you didn't get to be happy, neither did she.

Of course you still cared. How would you plan your next best move, if you didn't follow-up with how the last one affected her? That is what you told yourself when you searched her face for something all those times you spit poison to her; when only you noticed her eyes getting glassy for that one second of vulnerability after your shot.

Your quiet tears on those same nights were nothing more than exhaustion from a day of interacting with a mudblood.

That is what you told yourself.

Destroying her reputation was just part of the plan to kill her heart. That is what you told yourself, when you rushed to highlight her flaws each time one of the boys mentioned her. Be it in front of her.

Especially in front of her.

That is what you told yourself.

And honey, you lost her.

You had relationships with beautiful smart girls, spread across houses. A quiet Ravenclaw here, a brilliant Slytherin there. Not the Hufflepuffs; never them.

But all of them eventually turned into her after some time; it was always her name you whispered as they shouted yours in those washrooms and cupboards on days of rendezvous.

Or maybe, you got interested in them in the first place precisely why. They had some thing like her.

Too bad for them they never could _be_ Her. Hermione.

It makes you sad you could never say her first name in front of her. Show her how the muscles of your tongue twisted perfectly to form it. How it was meant to be called by you. Only you.

If you couldn't show her, you made sure she didn't hear it from anyone else either.

And hence, you lost her.

There was a point where you really did start becoming indifferent. Three years were a long time.

But not too soon after, when she was made to fight as lead in the war, and your heart stopped beating for those days she attended class with unexplainable scars and bandages, or not at all, you realised it wasn't indifference. It was habit.

Your Slytherin girlfriend of that time, whom you had convinced after a long period of courting (they all did eventually end up agreeing, consistency was key), sensed something then. Oh how she sensed something then; but nothing which a date here and make-out there couldn't fix.

They couldn't know just how much you hated her. That is what you told yourself.

You weren't consistent with _her_ because you had given your heart and got it back broken. A broken heart couldn't keep flying back.

So you took the shards, lay them in a dark dark place, and flew through years making all of the others believe it was your heart you were giving to them, while it was only a poor replica in honesty. They wanted to, and so they believed.

Truth was that Draco Malfoy, the King of Hearts, had his destroyed years ago.

There was no one you couldn't charm. Sometimes you liked to believe you had her too. But one more hateful stare on her part, and one more Crabbe or Blaise running to you with what they overheard her saying about you in the Great Hall, was enough reason to dismiss such a belief. You had lost her years ago.

* * *

The last two years of war and choosing sides had changed all, and you both found easy conversation more convenient than faux hate.

Yes, you still resented her. Yes, she still hated you for everything you did. But how much longer could you two have gone, having your late-night conversations only under the pretense of a fight?

Because things had changed somewhere in between. Because the mutual hate had now become important to everyone else, but you two. And you'd rather have conversations with her in any form you could get, than not at all. So you, all mature & grown up through wars of experience, pulled back from the Hate Club you yourself had established.

A surprising-to-the-whole-school companionship was finally built in the final year. No, you won't have gone as far as to call it friendship. Not unless she said it was that, first.

And when with her, the dark place with the shards got its light.

This seventh last year, you ended up with a Gryffindor. It was over, the search. You had finally found her in someone else. The same bloody house and its values, after all.

At best, a substitute. Just like the heart you were now giving away.

The shards still lay in the same place, waiting for the breaker to come back and fix it the way only she would know.

No matter how hard you denied wanting it otherwise, you had lost her.

* * *

Now as you leave the school for good, for the better, you two do say goodbye. You have a great future ahead, the both of you, and you can put your life on the bet.

But she is trying to say something. Something you've been dying to hear for the past 7 years. Or maybe that's not what she is saying.

And the maybe is what destroys you, love.

You hug her farewell, before she lets anything out and crushes the shards to dust.

You lose her.


End file.
